i have a sudden strong feeling to blog about this.
in response to claire soon's speech on world peace during this morning's assembly:
WORLD PEACE.definition:
World peace is a future ideal of freedom, peace and happiness among and within all nations. The realization of world peace may also make the idea of individual nations obsolete. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_peace
21st september was set aside as world peace day for us to commemorate world peace, yet ironically, we have only had 26 days of world peace for the last 5 years.
only 26 days free from war, fighting, explosions and bombings
only 26 days free from the cries of desperations from war victims and moans of injustice.
only 26 days free from broken families.
ONLY 26 DAYS of WORLD PEACE.for the last 5 years since 2001.in the 2001 911 incident, 3000 people have died in the world trade centre after the hijacked planes america 77 and flight 97 (not sure. cant remember.) crashed into the twin towers.
when the first plane crashed, the americans were nochalant about it. news reporters reported in bored voices that a plane have crashed into the north tower of the world trade center, assuming that it was all just an accident.
it was only when the second plane crashed into the north tower of the world trade center that realised that this was not an accident. it was a hijack. and they panicked.
one other plane also crashed into the pentagon and the last plane, united/flight 93 missed it's target by minutes and crashed into a woods in Pennsylvania.
after the incident, US declared war on iraq and that was when thousands have died, many have been injured and millions have lost their loved ones.
that's not all.
what about the Israel-Lebanon conflict/ invasion of lebanon?
The 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, known in Lebanon as the July War[15] and in Israel as the Second Lebanese War[16] was a military conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel, primarily between Hezbollah paramilitary forces and Israel. It started on 12 July 2006 and ended when a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect on 14 August 2006.The conflict began when Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israeli military positions and border villages to divert attention from another Hezbollah unit that crossed the border and captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel responded with massive airstrikes and artillery fire on the Lebanese civilian infrastructure, which Israel claimed members of the Hezbollah militia were using as cover, an air and naval blockade,[17] and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah in turn launched rockets into northern Israel and engaged the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in guerrilla warfare.The conflict killed over 1,500 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, severely damaged Lebanese infrastructure, displaced about one million Lebanese and 500,000 Israelis,[18] and disrupted normal life across all of Lebanon and northern Israel. Even after the ceasefire, 256,000 Lebanese remained internally displaced [11], while most Israelis have returned to their homes.
On 11 August 2006 the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved UN Resolution 1701, in an effort to end the hostilities. The resolution, which was approved by both Lebanese and Israeli governments the following days, also called for the disarming of Hezbollah, for Israel to withdraw and for the deployment of Lebanese soldiers and an enlarged United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) force in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese army began deploying in southern Lebanon on 17 August 2006. Israel began to withdraw some of its forces from the country; the blockade was ended 8 September.[19]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflictand the darfur genocide?
DEFINE GENOCIDE:
1. murder by the government of people due to their national, ethnical, racial or religious group membership.
2. the legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty. this treaty includes nonkillings that in the end somehow manage to eliminate the group, for example, preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group into another group.
3. is also known as democide, it is similar to the first meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or rather, intentional murder.
The Darfur conflict or the Darfur genocide is an ongoing armed conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, mainly between the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited from local Baggara tribes, and the non-Baggara peoples (mostly land-tilling tribes) of the region. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, has provided arms and assistance and has participated in joint attacks with the group, systematically targeting the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups in Darfur. The conflict began in February 2003.
Estimates of deaths in the conflict have ranged from 50,000 (World Health Organization, September 2004) to 450,000 (Dr. Eric Reeves, 28 April 2006). Most NGOs use 400,000, a figure from the Coalition for International Justice. The mass media has described the conflict as both "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide." The U.S. Government has described it as genocide, although the United Nations has declined to do so. (See also: List of declarations of genocide in Darfur)After fighting worsened in July and August 2006, on August 31, 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 1706 which called for a new 20,000 UN peacekeeping force to supplant or supplement the 7,000-troop African Union force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as foreign invaders. The next day, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region. (See also: New Darfur peacekeeping_force) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflictand here's what i got from liuyi:
"on one of the first of my five visits to darfur, i came across an oasis alone the chad border where several tens of thousand of people were sheltering under tress after being driven from their home villages by the arab janjaweed militia, which has been supported by the sudan government in khartoum. under the first tree, i found a man who had been shot in the neck and the jaw; his brother, shot only in the foot, had carried him for forty-nine days to get to this oasis. under the enxt tree was a widow whose parents had been killed and stuffed in the village well to poison the local water supply; then the janjaweed had tracked down the rest of her family and killed her husband. under the third tree was a four year old orphan girl carrying her one year old baby sister on her back; their parents had been killed. under the fourth tree was a woman whose husband and children had been killed in front of her, and then she was gand-raped and left naked and mutilated in the desert. those were the people that i met under just four adjacent trees. and in every direction, as far as i could see, were more trees and more victims - all with similar stories."how was i to know that this made me cry. i felt most for the brother and the mutilated woman. imagine carrying your brother for 49 days in a desert with nothing and an injured foot. or going through the mentally, emotionally and physically torturing and painful experiences like what the mutilated women went though.is this right? was it fair for all these victims to go through all of these? is this right? yet what can we do? liuyi: people would say we cant really do much actually, as we dont have the authority. but we can afford to KEEP PEACE with ourselves and NOT discriminate thers or become racist. if only everyone did that, peace would be inevitable. so thus, it must first start with us. we can spread the news!for more on the darfur genocide, go liuyi's blog. (: btw. did i mention that liuyi actulay practised her LIT S.E.E SKILLS by discussing this with me? haha! (:
